James Murdoch: “Happy” with Sky stakes

By Chris Forrester

James Murdoch, 21st Century Fox’s deputy COO, says recent disposals have freed up cash for reinvesting in the company’s core businesses, including sports channels. However, speaking at Morgan Stanley’s TMT conference in New York, he also said that 21st Century Fox would continue to look for potential acquisitions provided the price was right.

Questioned as to whether this could include increasing its 55 per cent stake in Sky Deutschland, or BSkyB (39 per cent owned), and Murdoch said: “at this point, we are pretty happy with where we are”. He implied that as far as BSkyB was concerned the time and opportunity existed a few years ago but was “history now” but that all options were open as far as the longer term is concerned.

Murdoch was upbeat about the state of his business saying that the growth of Internet-based services was “super exciting” and “we see this as really great opportunities to distribute” our programming via third parties or the company’s own TV Everywhere solutions as Sky Deutschland, BSkyB and Sky Italia have done.”